“I’m serious, Kathy. Don’t you think being responsible for his existence would put a strain on your relationship? I mean, it’s like I’m John’s mother or something.”
Kathy shook her head. “Sorry. I can’t buy into that. I’ll grant you that if it’s true, if you really can paint people into life, it would make you feel pretty weird. But think about it beyond John. You’ve tapped into something magic. You’ve proved that there is more to the world than what we can normally see of it. You should be filled with awe and wonder. I know I get all kinds of little tingles running up and down my spine just thinking about it.”
“But you don’t have John to think about.”
“That’s true. Maybe you could paint somebody for me.”
Izzy sat up. “You’re not being much help.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m being serious.”
“I know you are. So talk to him, ma belle Izzy. What else can you do?”
V
The next evening Izzy made her way to the Silenus Gardens, that part of Fitzhenry Park which was dedicated to the poet Joshua Stanhold. Guided by the pools of light cast by a long row of lampposts, she walked through that silence peculiar to winter. This far into the park the only sound she heard was her own muffled footsteps. A dusting of snow had fallen earlier in the evening, but the clouds had moved on now, leaving behind a sky deep with stars. Her breath frosting in the air, Izzy brushed the snow from the wrought-iron bench that stood directly below the tall bronze statue of Stanhold. She tucked the back of her jacket under her to insulate her from the cold metal and sat down. And then she waited.
She’d thought long and hard about where she wanted to meet John. It had to be somewhere relatively private, so that they could talk without being interrupted, but she also wanted it to be someplace that gave her a sense of empowerment because otherwise she didn’t think she’d be able to muster the strength she was going to need to sustain her through what was to come. The Silenus Gardens was perfect on both counts.
The first collection of poetry she’d ever owned had been Stanhold’s The Stone Silenus. She’d bought it on Kathy’s recommendation, a month or so after they began rooming together at Butler U., and then went on to get his collected works. The images of satyrs and fauns that pervaded his work spoke directly to the heart of the somewhat animistic country girl she’d been when she first arrived in the city—not so much because they reminded her of the lost countryside of her youth as that the images in his poetry seemed to lend a certain approval to the feeling she’d always had in those woods around her home: that they were full of spirits and, moreover, that they were communing with her, if she could but make out what they were saying.
Here in the shadow of Stanhold’s statue was the only place she’d ever found away from Wren Island that gave her an echo of that magical sense that otherwise she only retained in memory. So what better place to meet with a piece of magic that she’d called into being herself?
She didn’t have long to wait. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes after her own arrival that she saw John’s familiar figure come ambling down the path toward her. At least she didn’t have to wonder how he always knew just when and where to find her anymore, she thought. Since she’d brought him into this world, how could there not be a strong, if one-sided, connection between them? She certainly never knew where he was at any particular time unless he’d told her in advance.
John paused on the path in front of her. He regarded her for a long moment before he finally sat down beside her. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jean jacket, impervious, as always, to the cold, but now Izzy knew why that was as well.
“It won’t be long before spring returns,” he said after a few moments of their sitting together in silence. “You can feel it lying under the snow, waiting and expectant. Ready for its turn upon the stage.”
“Have you ever seen a spring before?” Izzy asked. She’d called him across in the autumn of last year.
John turned to look at her. “What makes you think I haven’t?”
“I know, John. I know all about how you came here. I don’t know exactly where it is that you came from, but I do know it wasn’t anywhere in this world.”
His eyebrows lifted quizzically, but he didn’t reply.
“I brought somebody else across,” Izzy went on. “I haven’t seen him yet myself, but Kathy did. She wrote a story about him without ever having seen my painting, so that’s how I know he’s real. She described him exactly like the weird little man I painted.”
John nodded slowly. “The treeskin.”
“The what?”
“That’s what we call them—part tree, part manitou. Little mysteries made of bark and vine and bough.”
“So you know about him?”
“How could I ignore him? The poor little fellow’s been lost and scared ever since he arrived.
Someone had to look after him.”
“I never thought of that.”
John shrugged. “No one can think of everything.”
A flash of irritation went through Izzy. Though she doubted he’d done it on purpose, she didn’t like to be on the defensive. Not today.
“Why did you always play me along?” she asked.
She was surprised at how calm she felt. She’d barely slept the night before and all day long she’d been nervously rehearsing what she was going to say, how she was going to say it. But now that the moment had come, all her nervousness had fled. She felt only a melancholy resignation inside, a sense that something was ending, that she was bringing it to an end, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“Because your knowing changes everything,” John said.
“What do you mean?”
“We can’t meet as equals anymore. Every time you look at me now, you’re going to be reminded of how you brought me across from the before. You feel responsible for me. You think that I can’t be who or what I want to be without affirmation from you.”
“That’s not true. I mean, I know I brought you across, but ...” She sighed. “No. You’re right. That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
“And the funny thing is, that’s the way it is for everyone. You can decide to call yourself Janet, but if everybody you ever meet insists on calling you Izzy, then you’re going to be Izzy whether you want the name or not. It’s that way for every facet of our lives—from the way we look to the careers we choose for ourselves. We all depend on other people to confirm who we are and what we’re doing here. The only difference with you and me is that with us this sense of confirmation is more specific. You think I exist because you painted me into existence. I know that I was somewhere else, in some before, and that you merely called me over.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying you didn’t make me. You just brought me here. The way you could go to Australia and bring a native of that country into this one. There’s no difference. None at all.”
“Except that Australia’s on the map.”
John nodded. “While in the before, there is only story.”
“You said that before, this thing about stories. First you said you came from nothing, then you said it was just a different kind of story from the one we’re in now.”
John looked away, over the snowy common of the Silenus Gardens.
“I don’t remember the before,” he said finally. “I came here and I had a name in my head. You painted me as a Kickaha, so I know the Kickaha. I know their history and their customs. You painted me in an urban setting, so I know this city. Everything else I learned as our story unfolded.”
“What about Rushkin? You tried to warn me against him when we first met.